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Ray Tracing: A Japanese Game Market Expose With Ray Nakazato

GS:
When I was at the Tokyo Game Show last year, they were giving out Xbox
Live cards, and I thought it was a great idea to get people interested
in the console - but they were only worth 100 points each. And you
can't buy anything with it!

RN: Sometimes they give away a little card, and it randomly chooses an Xbox Live Arcade game for free.

GS: Your comment about Japanese developers working mainly
on Nintendo consoles is interesting, because I wonder if it will make
the next-gen knowledge base build up slower in Japan. Is that a concern
for you, for the industry's future in Japan? Or do you think Nintendo
will be enough to sustain it?

RN: It’s a big worry. The gaming industry is global, so as long as
the global industry is healthy, it should be fine. But if you consider
the Japanese economy with the Japanese industry only, it's a concern. I
think Japan will position itself toward more classic-styled games. It’s
similar to how Korea and China (are known for) PC online games, and
high-end beautiful games are done by American or European publishers.
There will be a little bit of a positioning difference, but overall, I
think the global gaming industry will be healthy. I think Japan will be
very, very behind in terms of technology, though.

GSG: Capcom and Square-Enix are even licensing the Unreal
engine now, so that makes me think that other companies are seeing the
value of Western gaming now.

RN: Yes, and Lost Odyssey is using Unreal Engine 3 as well.

GS: Since you also worked there, why do you think that EA
hasn't been able to succeed in Japan? Do you think that cutting their
Japanese development staff was a good idea?

RN: EA is the only Western company that's surviving in Japan, so you
could maybe say that EA is successful in Japan. But it's very hard for
Western companies to succeed in Japan. I think it's all about
perception, really. In the early days of the games market, Japanese
games were pretty interesting back then, while many games from overseas
were seen as being bad. Now, you'll find a lot of interesting and fun
games coming from North America and Europe, but because of that
experience that we have from the early 1990s, people tend to stay away
from Western games.

I think there's a market for Western games in Japan, so I tried hard
to bring those in. But still, pro-sports games are not popular in
Japan. Somehow, they prefer Konami's Winning Eleven soccer sim series over EA's FIFA
series, and they prefer Japanese-developed baseball sims as well. We
have our own feeling for baseball, and American baseball games are very
different. It’s really hard.

There were a few games that were successful, but (it’s all relative) even with the GTA series– it was successful but GTA III sold 300,000, GTA Vice City was 500,000, and San Andreas
was probably also 500,000. So that’s very, very successful as Western
games in Japan, but the sales numbers are still small overall.
Interestingly, those games that sell over 300,000 units in Japan are
pretty much all European-made.

Rockstar's controversial Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

GTA was from Europe, and Tomb Raider was quite
successful as well. When Sony first started with the PS1, they brought
a lot of games to Japan, and some of them were very successful, like Formula 1.
Interestingly, the basketball title that Sony released in Japan then
was very successful, but that was done in France. That was weird. Crash Bandicoot
was successful, and that's American-made, but it was done by Mark
Cerny, who used to work in Japan. So his experience was different.

GS: And also Naughty Dog has Hirokazu Yasuhara, the
original level designer from Sonic Team. He does all the level design.

RN: By the way, EA is very successful in the PC market in Japan. The
PC market is different. It's very hard for Western companies to be
successful on consoles in Japan, but in the PC market, the majority of
games are from the West. But the PC market in Japan is very small.
Right now, if you combine the PC and online market, it’s pretty big.

Online games are popular. But in terms of proper PC games, Age of Empires
is very popular, and first-person shooter games are also popular – but
on PC. So there are users who appreciate American games, but it’s more
toward PC.